With that said, I’d like to see the Mariners sign him. EC, I don’t see how the M’s signing Bonds (or being in support of the M’s signing Bonds) would indicate the team may as well give out the cream and clear to the whole roster, or that Bonds shouldn’t suffer any consequences from his actions. First of all, he’s been charged with perjury and could end up in jail. Those sound like consequences to me! Sure, they’re not MLB-imposed ones, but if he is convicted of perjury, who’s to say MLB wouldn’t act at that point? And besides, given the absence of a failed drug test or criminal conviction, what exactly could MLB have done? Second, the nuance here is pretty simple: if the Mariners sign him, it would be with the assumption that he plays the 2008 season clean. And if he’s presently clean, I don’t see what the problem is with having him on the team. Is it really that much different than if, say, the Mariners had traded for Josh Hamilton? He broke baseball’s rules, and now he’s clean. Yeah, we’d like to think he’s a nicer guy than Bonds for admitting his mistakes and working to fix them–and that’s certainly commendable–but I don’t really see how that matters from a roster construction standpoint. There are plenty of jerks on MLB rosters. And yeah, I don’t like Bonds or what he did, and would be happy to see him go to jail, but in the meantime, it’d be nice if our DH position became a strength instead of an embarassment.

I don’t think anyone will sign Bonds, but I could see how the M’s could benefit from the move. It could actually turn out to be enough to get them all the way. Chances are that he wouldn’t be around for the playoffs though and that would make it more difficult. If it weren’t for looming trials and possible jail-time in the upcoming 7 months I’d say it was worth the chance, but you’d be upsetting some fans that might not come back for a long time without any guarantee that he’d ever suit up for 1 Major League game as a Mariner. If it seemed more than a 50% likelihood that he could make it through the season I would probably think it worthwhile. This is a great and tough question you’ve asked. I think I’d rather hope that Vidro finds his way to the bench for a productive young bat to replace him though.

By the way, guys, kudos to all of you for keeping this conversation pretty civil. When I saw this post go up, my first thought was “uh-oh, this is going to be a rough couple of days”; but I’m not sure we’ve had to moderate any comments in this post at all.

I’m a firm believer in positive reinforcement, and you all done good.

Barry Bonds and the other players were being sent a clear message, and Barry took the hint. He was way behind the curve and to focus on him for the steroids era because he had the most natural talent, and was able to benefit more than a lot of marginal and mediocre players is grossly unfair.

But you can’t hold a Barry Bonds responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole of Baseball? And if all of Baseball is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our sports institutions in general? I put it to you, isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!

I’d take Gaylord Perry, Shoeless Joe, Pete Rose, Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds. The others got caught injuring the integrity of the game as well as hundreds of others and I don’t care. The integrity of the game has involved cheaters from the get go. So many people have admitted cheating in baseball that if all the known ‘cheaters’ were removed from the Hall of Fame there would be plenty of room for many of the worthy players in this century to fill those spots. Cheating is not a valid reason to be so disgruntled about Bonds if you have no issue with players who cheated in other ways.

I would bet that the sham will not end until long after all the players that have been linked to PED’s (hearsay or not) have retired. All the scapegoats are still going to have trouble getting in to the Hall of Fame and it’s ridiculous to me. Palmiero failed a test, OK. Did Bonds, Clemens or McGwire? How about Sosa ?(who’s believed to have pulled a Bonds and got caught pulling a Ruth in 1 career!) I guess nobody cares about corked bats anyway…Is it because it’s perceived to have less effect than Steroids? Well…Vaseline has a greater effect on a pitch than steroids do.

Hate to break it to you and everyone else out there, but Bonds still hasn’t broken any rules. Blame baseball all you want for that disaster, but he had a 1.053 OPS *last year* – with nary a trace of steroids in his system. The man still hasn’t even tested positive yet, once. A typo is the closest thing anyone’s come to any hard evidence. And during the years when everybody *says* he took steroids, it wasn’t against the rules of the game. I hate it just as much as everyone else (believe it or not), but those are the facts.

He’s a great baseball player, one of the best of all time. At 43, he’d be the third or fourth-best player on our team. Damn right I want to reward him with a roster spot instead of someone like Mike Morse, who has tested positive TWICE (him ‘paying the penalty’ doesn’t do it for me, either). Honestly, the only difference between the two is you’ve been spoonfed how bad a person Bonds is by an enigmatic media, and you ate it up. And that’s sad.

Plus, did I mention he’d be taking Turbo out of the starting lineup…? That’s probably the best possible baseball situation ever – replacing Barry Bonds with Turbo. It honestly gets no better than that.